Three Florida residents pleaded guilty Friday to charges related to attacks on pregnancy resource centers, including Winter Park, between May and July 2022.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) said Caleb Freestone, Amber Smith-Stewart and Annarella Rivera chose to target pro-life reproductive health centers that provided patients with resources and counseling about alternatives to abortion.
Authorities said the defendants vandalized the buildings with threatening messages.
Freestone, Smith-Stewart and Rivera pleaded guilty to conspiring to injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate employees of the targeted pregnancy resource centers.
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The abortion extremist group Jane's Revenge aimed in the wrong direction at first when it attempted to vandalize the Jackson Right to Life office building. (Photo courtesy of Kathy Potts)
By pleading guilty, the defendants admitted to having participated in attacks during nighttime hours, while wearing masks and dark clothing to conceal their identities. The suspects then spray-painted the facility with threatening messages such as: “If abortions are not safe, then neither [sic] it's you”, “YOUR TIME IS OVER!!”, “WE'RE COMING FOR YOU” and “We're everywhere”.
“These defendants vandalized pregnancy resource centers with threatening messages intended to terrorize employees at those centers,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. “Violence and threats have no place in the national discourse on reproductive rights. The Department of Justice is committed to holding accountable those who seek to interfere with access to reproductive health services in our country, regardless of the point of view of the accused or their victims.”
The Justice Department announced an indictment against River and Gabriella Oropesa in March for participating in a conspiracy to prevent employees of reproductive health services centers from providing those services. The two suspects joined Freestone and Smith-Stewart, who were charged in January, as co-conspirators.
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FILE- A group of anti-abortion protesters break into the Women's Action March for Reproductive Rights at Mariachi Plaza in Los Angeles, California, on October 8, 2022. (DAVID MCNEW/AFP via Getty Images)
The messages left by the suspects were consistent with those that the far-left group, Jane's Revenge, took credit for spray-painting pro-life centers after vandalizing dozens of them following the leaked Supreme Court decision in the case. Dobbs v. Whole Women's Health. case that ultimately led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade last summer.
The Justice Department said similar facilities in Hollywood and Hialeah, Florida, were also attacked.
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FILE- Abortion rights activists march toward the U.S. Supreme Court on June 24, 2023 in Washington, DC (Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images)
Rivera, along with Freestone and Smith-Stewart, were accused of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act, by using threats of force to intimidate and interfere with employees of the pro-life center in Winter Haven who were providing or seeking to provide reproductive health services, and intentionally damaging and destroying the facility's property because the facility provides reproductive health services.
The FACE Act makes it a federal crime to use or threaten to use force to “injure, intimidate, or interfere” with a person seeking reproductive health services, or to intentionally damage a facility that offers reproductive health services.
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Sentencing is scheduled for a later date and all three defendants face a maximum of 10 years in prison.
Fox News Digital's Briana Herlihy contributed to this report.
